It's Bouquet - Not Bucket! - Hardcover

Snoad, Harold

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846243513 ISBN 13: 9781846243516

Publisher: Book Guild Publishing Ltd, 2009

Synopsis

Keeping Up Appearances is one of the best-loved British sitcoms and has now been seen in more than sixty countries around the globe, with a particularly huge following in the USA. The show, originally broadcast on the BBC from 1990 to 1995, starred Patricia Routledge as the unforgettable Hyacinth Bucket pronounced 'Bouquet!' the incorrigible snob whose desperate attempts at social climbing always end in disaster and humiliation.

Throughout the sitcom's five series (plus four Christmas specials), the producer and director was Harold Snoad, whose directing credits already included such classics as Dad's Army and The Dick Emery Show. In this hugely entertaining memoir of the series, Snoad takes us behind the scenes and into the hurly-burly world of TV production - from location shooting in the city streets of Britain's Midlands and the glamorous lounges of the QE2, to the daily grind of schedules and rewrites and the shenanigans and foibles of the actors ...

Witty and revealing, It's Bouquet - Not Bucket! offers both an exclusive insight into a great British institution - the situation comedy - and a comprehensive guide to one of its greatest examples, Keeping Up Appearances, with full plot synopses, cast lists and locations. Like the series before it, it's a book that looks set to gain its own band of avid admirers.

About this title

About the Author

Harold Snoad joined BBC Television after working in the theatre and climbed the rungs of the production ladder, becoming a producer/director in 1969 - in those days one of the youngest in the business. He started by directing a number of episodes of Dad's Army and then produced and directed numerous comedy series over the years starring, amongst others, Ronnie Barker, John Inman, Eric Sykes, John Cleese, Leslie Phillips, Geraldine McEwan, Susan Hampshire and Dick Emery, with the last of whom he worked for eight years.

His series over the years include Oh, Brother!, Are You Being Served?, His Lordship Entertains, Sykes and a Big, Big Show, Rings on Their Fingers, Casanova '73, The Dick Emery Show, Tears before Bedtime, The Further Adventures of Lucky Jim, Partners and Hilary.

There then followed the six series of Don't Wait Up starring Tony Britton, Nigel Havers and Dinah Sheridan (which won the 1989 T.R.I.C. [Television and Radio Industries Club] award for 'Sitcom of the Year'), Ever Decreasing Circles, starring Richard Briers (which was nominated for a BAFTA award two years running), the Ray Cooney farce Wife Begins at Forty, and, of course, Keeping Up Appearances. This was twice nominated for a BAFTA and, in 1995, won Holland's prestigious Silver Tulip Award.

As a writer, Harold Snoad adapted 66 episodes of Dad's Army for the radio before writing two original comedy series for that medium, as well as a series for television starring Richard Wilson and Bernard Cribbins. After 38 years with BBC Television, he has now returned to the theatre and recently directed the stage play Say Who You Are. He has also given a number of talks on cruise liners, mainly the QE2 but others as well, about television comedy. He is the author of the BBC publication Directing Situation Comedy (1988).

Edition details

• Publisher: Book Guild Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1846243513
• ISBN 13: 9781846243516
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224